In 1788 George Washington was elected as the first President of the United States. New York was then the country's capital city. On April 30, 1789, Washington stood on a balcony there and swore a solemn oath “to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." When the ceremony came to an end he officially took control of the nation's government. Washington believed that political parties were harmful. He said later that it was "the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage" them. Even so, he favored a strong federal government, so he tended to govern in a federalist manner. The way that he dealt with the "Whiskey Rebellion" of 1794 was an example of this.
The main crop grown by farmers in western Pennsylvania was corn. Some of this they made into whiskey which they then sold. When the federal government placed a tax on the whiskey the Pennsylvania farmers refused to pay it. They burned down the houses of the federal tax collectors or "revenue agents." who tried to make them pay. Washington sent an army of men to support the rights of the federal government. Faced by soldiers, the rebels went home quietly. The Whiskey Rebellion collapsed without any fighting. The soldiers arrested a few of the leaders, but later the President pardoned them. After this, there was no more organized resistance to paying the whiskey tax.
But many frontier farmers went on making whiskey that was never taxed. They made it in stills hidden away in the woods in places that revenue agents could not find. Such illegal" moonshine" whiskey-so called because it was often made at night-continues to be made to this day. The law-making, or "legislative," powers of the federal government were given to a Congress. This was made up of representatives elected by the people. Congress was to consist of two parts, the Senate and the House of Representatives. In the Senate, each state would be equally represented, with two members, whatever the size of its population.
The number of representatives a state had in the louse of Representatives, however, would depend upon its population. Finally, the Constitution set up a Supreme Court to control the "judicial" part of the nation's government. The job of the Supreme Court was to make decisions in any disagreements about the meaning of the laws and the Constitution. The Constitution made sure that there was a "balance of power" between these three main parts, or ' " branches," of the federal government. To each bunch it gan' powers that the or her two did not have; each had ways of stropping wrongful actions by either of the other two. This was to make sure that no one person or group could become powerful enough to take complete control of the nation's government.
The American people had rebelled against being ruled in an undemocratic fashion by Britain. They did not want to replace the unrepresentative rule of the king and parliament in Lon don with the rule of a tyranny cal central government in the United States itself Many Americans had another fear. This was that the federal government might try to weaken the tilt' of the states to run their own individual affairs. To remove this danger the Constitution said exactly what powers the federal government should have and what powers should be reserved for the states. It said that the states would be allowed to run their internal affairs as they wished. provided that they kept to the rules of the Constitution. Before the new system of government set out in the Constitution could begin. It had to be approved by a majority of the citizens In at least nine of the thirteen states.
